In the design environment, graphical solid model representations of parts and components are used to build virtual assemblies. The virtual assemblies are then used to build a product. Although the same parts may be used repeatedly throughout a design, historically designers either manually search for and borrowed those models created by other designers, or they redesigned or built new parts. Not having a central single source of information (i.e., models) led to significant time being spent finding parts already modeled or re-designing models again. Re-designing models also added a margin of error since different designers would most likely not model a part in the same manner.
Because of this uncontrolled method of obtaining models, the reliability of uniform designs was practically non-existent. In addition, the information and detail contained in any model was limited to that deemed necessary by the designer, therefore limiting the usefulness of the data to another user. Redundancy of effort and inaccuracy in design or data adds costs to any design. Furthermore this inefficiency may be compounded across a large organization or corporation because multiple Computer Aided Design (CAD) applications/systems may be used to perform design work which does not permit a simple means of sharing and standardizing the information.
Therefore, a need exists to make system/product design more efficient and uniform across a company performing a plurality of designs using various CAD systems.